‘Indians see Britain as a spent force. They enjoy our decline’

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Having written about the disastrous 19th-century Afghan war, William Dalrymple sees history being repeated. “We occupy the same cities, we are sniped at from the same hills”Raghu Rai/Magnum Photos

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The wooing of India by David Cameron is laudable — “but he should have avoided Amritsar”Stefan Rousseau/PA

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Shah Jahan, who was Mughal emperor from 1628 until 1658The Art Archive

Published at 12:01AM, February 23 2013

William Dalrymple is sitting at Zafar Mahal, the old summer palace in Delhi of
the last Mughal emperor, watching parakeets swooping through the arches and
looking out over a Sufi shrine and Hindu temple. Indians keep taking
pictures and asking for his autograph. David Cameron visited with more than
a hundred British companies this week, but it’s the historian who is feted
in India wherever he goes.

They love his tales of their continent even more than the British do. His
latest, Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan, about the first
AngloAfghan war, was for a time No